Fire It Up: Friday Morning Links

Here are some Chicago Fire related links for Friday morning:

-The Chicago Fire Front Office took a trip to Mexico recently. Quaker North America President, Jose Luis Prado, brought a delegation from Fire Front Office down to Mexico to visit the C.F. Pachuca headquarters. It sounds like the Front Office guys were able to get a good look at how Pachuca runs. Fire President of Soccer Operations, Javier Leon, reflected on the trip:

"We learned how the first team is structured," said Leon. "We learned about how their youth development is put together, how they recruit and scout and how they think about health and measuring performance.

This is just another example of how Quaker is taking their sponsorship of the club to another level. Using their resources to help aid the development of the Fire Front Office is definitely going above and beyond what shirt sponsors normally do.

-Anthony Zilis has a couple of short articles up over at MLSsoccer.com. One article mentions that Mike Magee, Chris Rolfe and Dilly Duka should all be ready for Saturday. Patrick Nyarko, however, has not practiced all week and will probably be sitting this one out. The other article talks about Egidio Arévalo Ríos possibly playing on Saturday and has a quote from Dilly on his new teammate:

"I mean, have you ever shaken the guy's hand?" Duka said with a laugh. "It seems like defensively he's going to run through people. That's what it seems like just by his handshake. He'll throw you to your knees, just shaking his hand."

I'm really getting too excited about Cacha.

-Kim Bellware at the Huff Post Chicago has a short interview up with Mike Magee. It's not a great interview, but she does ask Mike some specific questions about Chicago. It's a quick read.

-Chris Rolfe was nominated for Save of the Week. It's too late to vote now, but I would say that his save has a chance at winning this week.

-The Chicago Fire Third Jersey Contest is closed. From the sounds of the article, us fans might possibly have some jersey designs to vote on around Monday-ish...maybe.